Shipping Containers Coming To Fargate

[Meltman]

Just now, RollingJ said:

But will they be learned?

I doubt it but it may focus someone's attention if the person/people who dropped the ball were made accountable....as happens in private business. 

[RollingJ]

1 minute ago, Meltman said:

I doubt it but it may focus someone's attention if the person/people who dropped the ball were made accountable....as happens in private business. 

Highly unlikely - that never happens in the public sector - it's always 'someone else's' fault.

[Resident]

18 minutes ago, Planner1 said:

No one has “lost” £600k. This was only ever a temporary structure and would have been removed in any case. There were delays which meant the opening date was put back, so it wasn’t in use for as long as expected. 
 

Central government errors / overspends make £600k look like small beer. Last time I looked Crossrail was £4 BILLION overspent and HS2  many times that.
 

So perhaps a sense of proportion might be in order. The container project cost more than envisaged and didn’t deliver the expected benefits. Regrettable, yes. Lessons to be learned, of course. End of world, no.

Classic whataboutery & typical COUNCIL EMPLOYEE deflection tactic. 

But let's look at your whataboutery. 

Crossrail - Original costings 14.4 billion, actual 18.8 billion.  - 23% over
HS2 - Original costings 36 billion, actual 56 billion - 35% over

Container Park - Original costing 300,000, actual 600,000  100% over and not completed! 

Propotionally those other overspends are that much are they? 

 

Would you be happy if I quoted you a new kitchen and said it'd be 5000 then, whilst you're still missing a cooker and fitted your sink 2ft offset from the windoew, asked for 10,000 saying I won't be completing the rest because I didn't think to check where the drain was and can't fit the cooker because I ordered a gas one and there's no gas supply?  

Edited January 19, 2023 by Resident

[Victor Meldrew]

What I want to know is how anyone could have thought that those huge planters cum' litter bins would look good and add anything to the enjoyment of the area. 

[RollingJ]

9 minutes ago, Victor Meldrew said:

What I want to know is how anyone could have thought that those huge planters cum' litter bins would look good and add anything to the enjoyment of the area. 

Good question - they are way, way out of keeping.

[hackey lad]

41 minutes ago, Planner1 said:

No one has “lost” £600k. This was only ever a temporary structure and would have been removed in any case. There were delays which meant the opening date was put back, so it wasn’t in use for as long as expected. 
 

Central government errors / overspends make £600k look like small beer. Last time I looked Crossrail was £4 BILLION overspent and HS2  many times that.
 

So perhaps a sense of proportion might be in order. The container project cost more than envisaged and didn’t deliver the expected benefits. Regrettable, yes. Lessons to be learned, of course. End of world, no.

Thats ok then  

[WarPig]

4 hours ago, Victor Meldrew said:

What I want to know is how anyone could have thought that those huge planters cum' litter bins would look good and add anything to the enjoyment of the area. 

They are probably a barrier to prevent vehicles entering that end of Fargate. Ever notice the concrete bocks at the lower end? Remember the terrorist attacks in Europe a few year ago when a car or truck would plough into people on a pedestrian road? Fargate could have been one such easy target.

[Planner1]

14 hours ago, Resident said:

Classic whataboutery & typical COUNCIL EMPLOYEE deflection tactic. 

No, it’s a specific response to a poster who reckoned that if a central government project had overspent by a similar amount of money there would be folk on here demanding that heads should roll.

 

That was the point of citing government projects that overspend by much higher figures. 

[sheffbag]

To give an example of how big a balls up this is just look at the Spark project in york and how successful it is. and thats with  14 containers not 8

 

Project cost - £250K

https://democracy.york.gov.uk/documents/s110423/Annex 2 - SparkYork Business Plan Summary.pdf

 

id love to find the bid for the funding from sheffield to see what capital cost was used for the actual containers and why a lease was never sought given it was always a temporary project but in the interim this makes very interesting reading (note the 50% increase in costs in 3 months)

 

https://democracy.sheffield.gov.uk/documents/s57027/Container Park report.pdf

especially this bit about having it as two tiers

The design and construction of the containers is incomplete, and they do not meet building regulations approval to be used as a two- tier structure. To meet the regulations, further work would be required which could be in excess of £180,000. A more cost-effective option would be to utilise the containers in a single story, which mitigates some of the additional costs. Being utilised as a single story also allows the construction to be separated and utilised as individual units across a number of sites.

 

Edited January 20, 2023 by sheffbag

[sheffbag]

16 hours ago, Planner1 said:

No one has “lost” £600k. This was only ever a temporary structure and would have been removed in any case. There were delays which meant the opening date was put back, so it wasn’t in use for as long as expected. 
 

Central government errors / overspends make £600k look like small beer. Last time I looked Crossrail was £4 BILLION overspent and HS2  many times that.
 

So perhaps a sense of proportion might be in order. The container project cost more than envisaged and didn’t deliver the expected benefits. Regrettable, yes. Lessons to be learned, of course. End of world, no.

i disagree

the costs increased by 150K form the original allocation. This funding came from the Get Building grant which was a fixed pot of money. In order to approve this increase of budget that meant 150K was taken away from projects which would have been scoped out in the bid application. So while you say "no one has lost 600K" a project that may have actually worked was denied the funding it was originally promised due to no one at SCC saying "is this still a good idea" when it came to the committee approving the budget increase.

 

You say it didnt delvier the expected benefits. Unless the bid is in the public spectrum detailing the expected outcomes of the scheme then how do we know what hte expected benefits were?

 

As you are someone who evidently has experience of projects and their management Planner you know as well as i do that a lessons learned report will be written, filed and never seen or utilised again.

For me the key questions are

 

Who approved the decision to purchase the containers instead of leasing for the temporary length of the project? What cost efficiency was there for purchasing?

What was the original plan to dispose of the containers after the project?

During the scoping of the bid did no one put in the risk analysis that you would get no traders so no income to help cover costs?

During the scoping of the bid did no one put in the risk analysis that there may be underground works that would affect the site and what mitigation would be put in place?

When the bid was approved but then a 50% increase in costs was put forward for approval who authorised the budget increase and what reviews were put in place to substantiate the increase in budget as still being cost effective?

 

Sometimes you just have to abandon a project before it goes live and allow the claw back to take place to reuse the money for other projects. I'm sure that the scheme that was denied the 150K additional money the council approved from the grant would have liked to have spent it on their project. I've worked on projects before where the budget was £45M and even though a lot of the people could see issues and raised them it got to nearly tender approval before it was decided to run a much smaller pilot first to check feasability. Whilst they couldn't run a pilot here i would suggest that the people making the final decisions didn't look at the bigger picture in this instance.